Mastering the Art of Conscious Sales: Aligning with Client Aspirations

What's up, my man? Oliver, how are you today?

I am great. Thanks for having me.

Well, I'm super excited. We've had many conversations on Zoom. We've had several conversations in person. And I'm really thrilled for our dialogue today. And really, hopefully people tuning in today will stay until the very end. Because I think if we can close this loop for them and help them understand how they can be better, you know, practitioners, which is a practitioner who's also an entrepreneur, they, they will have, there'll be light years ahead in their thinking. Right. And if we can shift the way we think about our business, then it brings about new ways of doing things. So I'm thrilled for the conversations we've had. And you know, over those conversations, I've always thought, man, it'd be great to record that conversation and, and share it with others. So I want people listening to kind of be a fly on the wall and, but also an active participant and lean in. You know, move away from the things that are distracting you. If you're committed and serious about growing your business, changing the way you think about your business, and most importantly, impacting more lives, because that's what our businesses do as functional medicine and holistic practitioners, then, yeah, lean in. Oliver is a wealth of knowledge and he's somebody who I met through a variety of different networks, one of them being Archangel. And Archangel tends to attract very heart centered entrepreneurs, people who are kind of at the leading edge of their industries, who are also looking to continuously kind of apply the Kaizen principle, which is the continuous art of self improvement, and developing their products and services. And I witnessed, you know, yourself and David developing your business, which is a conscience, a conscious sales business over the years. And it's wonderful to see how far you guys have come and how much clarity you've, you've acquired along the way. And then, you know, in our last conversation that I had, I just had such a wonderful dialogue with you that was not related to sales, but more related to operations. And you know, for practitioners, like, sometimes we think our biggest problem is getting new patients, because that's what we were so passionate about, is helping people. But our biggest problems might be operational and they could be holding us back from helping more people. So maybe this gives people a chance to look at their business through a slightly different lens as well. So with that being said, that was a mouthful. But with that being said, thank you and I appreciate you being here today.

Yeah, no, that was great. You hit like all the marks. That was a fantastic way to just Sort of kick us off and tee us off. So again, thanks for having me. I'm excited to jump in.

Thank you. I know we can go in a variety of different directions, but let's start off with sales. And what is your definition of sales and.

Or selling well. And I think because sales as a whole has evolved over the years and where we've landed with what we call conscious sales is I like to define it as basically supporting people and making a buying decision that's in the best interest of their highest selves. And so breaking that down a little bit, it's. It's supporting people, not persuading or convincing people. It's to help them make a buying decision, not to get them to buy. Right. And so again, a lot of sales tactics and such are about convincing and coercing people into buying something they may not actually need or that may not actually serve them. So again, in conscious sales, our idea is you're looking to support them in making a buying decision. Whether it's a yes or a no is equally valuable to us as conscious salespeople because what we're doing is supporting people in making decision because the transformation happens in the decision. Right. And so that's a big part. And then that's aligned with their highest selves is another big one. Because again, it's very, it's almost, you call it like a shortcut or easy to have someone purchase based on the. Their pain. And the reality is most people, when they come to you to buy, they're usually coming from a place of pain. And it's important to obviously identify the pain, identify where they want to be, create the gap. Like these things are so important. But what a lot of what I like to call sort of like shadow salespeople will do is they'll just really drive the pain and have people make a decision from a place of pain. And that often is not their highest self, not their best version of self, not the person that you need to be selling to. Because if you do that often you will easily create buyers remorse because they're purchasing from this place of negativity, this place of shame, this place of whatever. Whereas again, in this sort of conscious sales model, you identify, but we really speak into like who you get to be, who you, who you already are, like reminding of your greatness, but then also what it looks like to be even better. And this of course applies to health as well. Like as health practitioners, of course you need to diagnose what the problem is, where the pain is coming from. And we Also, what I can imagine some practitioners do is they might spend potentially too much time on digging into that pain and really making people feel ultimately bad about themselves instead of really focusing more on, hey, like, what can we do together to get you to the dream, to the place you want to be, to be able to run with your kids and keep up with them, or again, whatever the health issue is that's preventing them from living the life they want to live. Like really focusing on that and bringing them into the state of positivity so that when they purchase, they purchase saying, I'm doing it because I want this and not because I don't want that. Right, Right.

Yeah. I think it's very important to recognize what you just said because a lot of people who are taught sales are taught to kind of really twist the knife and squeeze some lemon juice on it and put some salt on it.

Yeah.

Just kind of like every nasty thing that you can think of to, to create and agitate the pain. And I think while that might be relevant, to really help people understand the magnitude of what they're dealing with without exaggerating it, but then taking them to make a decision from a place of aspiration. Right. And I know that there's a emotional decision that's made and then there's a logical decision that's made in the process and kind of use different parts of our brain, so to speak, to make that decision. So we want to appeal to both sides. Right. They say that people decide with emotion and justify with logic.

You got it.

And I've always, I've always had a hard time with, you know, pain based sales versus aspiration based sales. I try to keep my message as, as positively influenced as I can and make people look at their health from. Through an aspirational lens versus a. I don't want this. And I think it's important for, you know, for me to acknowledge the alignment here because we don't like in our practice, like, we're not trying to prevent disease, we're trying to create health. Right. So it's kind of in the same vein of what you're saying is like instead of focusing on what I don't want, which is this disease, and try to prevent it. If I've put my attention on what I actually do want and how I want to accomplish it, then, you know, we can present ourselves as a right fit solution for people.

Yeah. And I'll even, I'm sure you probably have good data on this or maybe whereby ultimately healing someone who's coming in from A place of positivity from a place of aspiration. Their healing journey will be faster than if they're coming from a place of negativity. Because as we've seen and know, like, our energetics are incredibly important. And the more positively aligned and good vibes and all the things that we have, the more our cells will want to activate to help us heal.

Yeah. I'm curious, did you, when you came up with this concept of conscious sales, was it inspired by a sales process you went through at some point or, you know, what kind of trigger that for you?

Yeah, good question. So, first of all, it was a collaborative effort primarily taken on by David. David really like coined this and developed it, but it was something that we both definitely collaborated on a lot. And so my portion of it and my story is, you know, I've been in sales for over a decade. I've sold anything and everything under the sun from like online, in person, luxury, commodity, you know, service products, like, pretty much anything. The only thing I haven't really sold is like cars and everything else in terms of like, category of thing I have done. And so throughout that journey, I've done a lot of my own learning and practicing and attempting of things. And during a more ignorant time of what it means to be sort of, you know, really looking out for other people's best interests, I did apply more what I would now consider to be like shadow type sales kind of thing. Right. Really just again, like there would be. And again, this is part of the issue. So much emphasis and accolades put around the sale happening and not about actually bringing on an aligned client. We can talk about aligned client afterwards, but. And so, you know, it's just whatever you could do to get the sale. Right. And so in the beginning, it was much more tactical in that way. And then I started to learn more methods. I learned from like, Brian Tracy. I learned from, I don't remember who the author was, but the challenger sale, all these other types of models and such. And ultimately when I went and worked with Preston Smiles and Kaboom with David, David was sales manager there. I became head of operations there. And that's where conscious sales started to really become developed because Preston had a very high standard of service for his clients and his people. And he had a vision that was crafted both with David of like. And I, I, I believe this very truly too is like, where does the customer journey start? A lot of people think it starts after the sale. Like, they think like, like that's like when delivery starts. That's when it Matters, in a sense. But as we know, or, or those who have been really practicing business for a long time, it starts at first touch, first contact. The customer journey has begun. And so how you serve them from the point of a marketing, you know, Instagram posts all the way through a sales conversation, through, through delivery and so forth, is all, all the customer journey and all incredibly important. And so when Preston was like, hey, like, I need the people coming in to be treated like, in just a whole other way, we need to rethink sales. And again, David, being aligned with that and so forth, we ultimately created what has now become what's conscious sales and such. So what's, what's important about it is. It's less about. Because some people ask us, like, well, what's different about it? The, the biggest primary difference about it is it's where you're coming from. But the tactics are ultimately almost the same, like how you like what you do, like understanding personality types, understanding, like closing ladders, understanding sales. Like all these things are ultimately the same. It's where you're coming from and what your intention is. That is so much of what conscious sales is. But the tactics and how you use them is also what becomes different. But the taxes themselves are about the same.

Yeah, I think it's, it's good for practitioners to kind of reimagine what that process can look like. You know, the we. We call sales the S word in our, in our language, you know, I mean, or in our communities, because people are so afraid of that.

And yes, I love that you bring this up.

They're. They're just not used to that idea because they were, they were being sold by somebody else. Right. Whether it's their hospital that they're working for or the company that they were working for was selling their service to another, you know, client. And then, you know, obviously they were then doing the work for that client, so they're not used to being sold, even though that's what they've been this whole time. But now they need to do the selling. Right. So I'd love, I'd love for you to share, perhaps. I know I've heard a variety of different ways that this has been shared, but I love your perspective of where does this sometimes negative perception of sales come from?

Totally. Yeah. It's very simple. Right. Shady sales and pivoting what shady sales is to sales as a service. And so shady sales, and it's what a lot of us have experienced where we're being pushed, we're being coerced. We're being convinced, we're not being heard, we're not not being considered. Like, all these things are things that have happened to us. And so what it starts to create in our own mind, which then permeates into our own ability to sell, is this sense that selling is shady, right? Like, it's sketchy, it's just ultimately not for in the best interest of the person you're selling. But what gets to happen is, is a huge mental pivot of recognizing that sales is a service. And if you have something of value that can actually support someone, then it is your duty to make sure that they get to the place that they see it's worth buying. And the better you are at sales, the better you are at ultimately just sharing with the other person enough sensation and understanding that this is obviously what's best for them. And again, conscious sales, part of it is, and David has a really good story of this actually is sometimes as a salesperson, you tell them no, even if they want to say yes. And a great example is David was doing a sales call for a potential coaching client a few years ago, and she said yes. She was down doing all this kind of stuff. And he recognized, though, that she was a program hopper. You know, like someone who, like, buys a program, thinks it's going to fix, you know, a month later, doesn't really do much about it, goes on to another program, thinks that's going to fix. Like, you know, just program to program to program. And he called her out and he said, hey, you know what? I'm not going to let you buy because this is not what's in your best interest. You need to stop doing this. You need to stop. And she broke down crying. All this kind of stuff, I think a week or two later, ended up contacting him back and saying, like, that was the most valuable thing that's happened to me in forever. I've now, like, you know, really done what I was supposed to do, and I'm working on it. Long story short, this is what the power of, like, conscious sales and like, thinking of sales as a service is, is. You're literally ultimately just looking to see what's in their best interest and supporting them. And when you come to the conclusion that it is supporting them and them also seeing that it is in their best interest and then ultimately supporting them.

In getting there, yeah, you almost want to be an ally in the process. And one way I've kind of positioned it kind of visually for myself and physically imagining it is sitting on the same side of the desk as they are versus sitting across from them. So you're helping them make a decision that's in their best interest. And sometimes that decision that's in their best interest may not be working with. You might be working with a person that you can refer them to, or maybe they need a whole different paradigm altogether with the challenge that they have. And that's how we always want to leave people. Is better than we found them and with more clarity than how we found them. Because if we're trying to get someone to do something that they can't see is in their best interest, I think that creates a lot of friction. But unfortunately, it also creates a lot of confusion for people, because maybe we did such a good job kind of agitating their fears, but intuitively, they just knew it wasn't the right thing for them. And now, you know, I don't think that helps them with their health journey either. Right. Confusion.

You probably left them freaked out now.

Yeah.

And not knowing where to go.

So. Yeah. So I think it's important that we all recognize that we want to always leave people better than we found them. And, you know, when it comes to selling, you know, really presenting an offer is how I like to phrase it, and I'm sure you have your own phraseology around it, but it's like, we're presenting an offer, and if it's the right offer, it'll be priceless, and if it's a wrong offer, it's worthless. So together, we'll decide by the end of this session together, and after answering all of your questions, you know, what makes the most sense for you. And most people are agreeable to that. And I think it kind of lets their guard down, and it helps them realize, okay, this person's trying to help me make the right decision for myself.

Yeah, that's actually a lot of. One of the things I like to support people in, how to navigate sales calls is when you open them. Like, when you start is setting a container, which. Which is basically exactly what you're doing. It's like, look, at the end of this, this is what's gonna happen. Like, you. You give them the map of what's gonna happen. So there's no. Because that's another big thing people are afraid of with sales is like, are they just gonna, like, try to close me, surprise me with something? Where is this gonna go? Are they gonna ask me for something now, or are they gonna try to take something from me? What's. You know, what's the deal? Right. What's the Fine print sort of thing. And so one of the best things you can do to create safety because ultimately someone can't make a decision, or at least not a rational one when not in safety. Right. Not feeling safe is to create that initial container of like, hey, here's what's going to happen today, here's what we're going to talk about, here's where we're going to end up. Here's the offer I'm going to make or maybe you're a to call closed thing because you have to do some research maybe before the second call so you'll say, hey, this we're going to do today, then I'm going to go home, I'm going to do that at that and we'll set up another call thereafter so we can review. But setting that out for them creates, you know, again, nervous system regulation, safety, all those things so they can surrender to what's going to happen now.

Yeah, I love that, I love that you said nervous system regulation. That seems to be like the topic of all topics these days in the entrepreneur space. Certainly, you know, that's a big topic of interest in people's health. That's the basis of our program is, is the state of the autonomics because we can only heal in certain states of, you know, when our nervous system is overstimulated, you know, over activated and a sympathetic dominant state, we can't be healthy. And I always say that, you know, sick people make sick decisions and if we're in a sympathetic state, we make hasty and sympathetic decisions because we can't even access the part of our brain that helps us intellectualize and process what we're, you know, what we're being presented. And so the, the state of somebody's nervous system is so huge. And, and you know, they say that the average person remembers about 11% of what you tell them. And you can only imagine what an unhealthy, unwell, brain foggy person remembers. And you know, so the best thing that we can do in service of them and in service of ourselves and in service of our business, right. Helping people make the right decision for themselves is to get them regulated. And creating that container is certainly a way to do it. When we had an in person office, we use very specific essential oils that would calm nice.

Yep.

The nervous system down. So they'd immediately walk in and be like their nervous system would regulate. We can use breathing techniques. But even again like creating that container, helping them understand even, even something as simple as hey, you don't have to Take any notes. I'm going to send you a recording of this conversation.

Yep.

So already they're, they're feeling calm, they're feeling wow, like they understand me. And if they have to go and explain the, the presentation to their husband. Right. It's just so much better if there's a video.

Totally.

And the way you interact and engage with that person, that third party who's witnessing that interaction should also be impressed by the interaction that they're witnessing. So yeah, there's so much to be said about just something as simple as creating that container and getting people to get into a more regulated state. I'm curious, from your perspective, what are some telltale signs that somebody's nervous system is dysregulated? So let's say you're having a conversation with somebody, what are some cues? Or, you know, maybe there's body language or maybe there's even words or the way they phrase things that can indicate they're dysregulated.

Yeah, this one's tough because it's, it's not, it's not set in stone because there's so many things to understand about a person and their personality in the first place. So for example, assuming people, I mean the terms are pretty self explicable, but a driver type, personality, someone like, you know, a type go, go, go, that kind of thing generally going to be more sharp, to the point, not care for details, all that kind of stuff. Right. If there are other personality types where if they get like what a driver is, that would be a telltale sign of not being regulated, whereas the opposite is true for that driver. So the opposite of driver is generally like analytical. Someone who wants the details, who wants to see it all spelled out, who wants to know all the tech, the technical pieces and all that kind of stuff. And to them that's regulating. Whereas again with the driver, if you did all that, that would be deregulating. So there's not really like a simple answer. The tactic here ultimately is to really practice your own understanding of other people. And the quicker you can get to understanding generally how someone is as a personality and all that kind of stuff, then you can know, well, if they're ever doing the opposite of what that personality type would tend to do, they're deregulated. Right. So again with a driver, I'm like, if they're not moving like pretty fast, something's wrong here. Whereas again, on an analytical, if they're moving really fast, something's wrong here.

Right. I. One of, one of the things and this sounds very familiar and similar to the disk score maybe you have before. And there's. There's only so many variations, right. Of different personalities. And I think they. They capture them all and categorize them in very similar ways. So in the disc, it's A. A D would be the driver, and the S would be the. The C would be the analytical, I guess, and the S would be the slow and steady. And it's interesting because a few years ago, I went to a. A training with Howard Partridge, who's Zig Ziglar's small business coach, who leads that organization. And they taught me about the disc score. And I'm like, man, the disc score is amazing because if we could understand what that person's behavior and communication style is, we know exactly what questions they have. We know what parts of our program to emphasize to them. We know exactly what words to use, what words not to use. And then I was like, man, how am I going to get this information from them? So we actually started including the disc score on our intake form. And. And so we would. And we'd present it back to them to help them understand, you know, what the score means. But then people would screw it all up and they wouldn't score themselves correctly. So then we just. So then we just added the four paragraphs that describe the different types.

Which do you resonate with kind of stuff.

Yeah, which. Which one. Which one love that kind of resonates with you the most? So every client that we speak to now, we know what their disc score is. So then we're able to, again, emphasize the right components of our offer, help them, you know, if we know what questions they have or what objections they might come in with, we can. We can address those. So we're speaking their language, which I think is an important takeaway.

Yeah. And again, this is a good opportunity to chat about, like, the difference between shadow sales and conscious sales, where it's like, shadow sales, again, like, this could be seen as like, well, aren't. Isn't this manipulative? Like, aren't you, like, you know, figuring out how they work so you could get in there and sell them? And it's like, again, it's all about the intention. Your intention is you're doing it so you could better communicate, better understand, support yourself. And being able to support them to get to that buying decision. Whereas shadow sales is like, as I sort of just exemplified would be like, I'm just doing this so I can figure out how to manipulate them better to buy my thing. But Ultimately this, it's the same tool, it's how we're using it. Right. It's the classic thing of like you, you give someone a hammer, they could either build a house or destroy one.

Right. A hundred percent. Yeah. Well said. Thank you. So we talked about nervous system regulation, we talked about what conscious sales means. I'd love to perhaps switch gears. And we also talked about creating a container which is so huge. But if we could switch gears and talk about operations. Because after the sales take place and after the person buys in and even before that there's all this stuff that's happening in the background. Right. Running a team and managing resources I think is another important aspect of business as we grow. And I find that some people, you know, once, you know, once you kind of learn how to make an offer, you know, of course promote yourself, make an offer, get people onboarded, then you're going to want to grow your business, you know, ideally maybe into at least a two man show, if from a one man show, and then eventually maybe even grow it further from there. And that's where operations and resource management becomes even more important. So tell me a little bit more about the operations side of what you do and how that came to be.

Yeah, yeah, I love that. So for me, operations is actually more my zone of genius, whereas sales is more like a zone of excellence. So zone of genius is described by something you're great at and actually love to do and lose track of time doing kind of thing. Right. And in zone of excellence, it's something you're great at but not necessarily in love with kind of thing. And most of the population ends up in their zone of excellence as their career. Whereas the whole zone of genius is seen as like this dream, this unachievable dream. So what I found is that ops is my zone of genius. It's where I'm naturally and intuitively intelligent and then furthermore trained and experienced. And so what? So, and then also just to tap on, cause you mentioned it as well, like operations is ultimately across the entire organization. It's not just like. And you kind of corrected yourself, but it's not just after the sale, it's every step of the way. Operations is ultimately the allocation of scarce resources to create value for your clients. Like that's really all it is. If we had unlimited resources, most operations would matter a lot less because you could just hire unlimitedly and buy everything unlimitedly and there'd be no issues. You know, like you would just. Money would be the solution every time and there'd Be no problem. But we don't, we have limited resources which means we need to be methodical and efficient with what we do to ultimately serve. And so for me in my journey, it actually sort of started to click like so I think back to one of my bigger achievements in my younger times when I started a franchise with College Pro Window Cleaning. They're like a student franchise, did that in university, kind of like student works. People know other sort of student brands and, and you know, I broke the rookie record there. They had been a 40 year old company at that point in the window cleaning division. And then the second year came first while also being a first at Cutco. And so again Cutco is a knife selling sort of business generally for students as well. But people stay in it as a career. And so I, you know, finished first salesperson in all of Canada at the same time as being first as a franchise. And in retrospect, what really, and this is why it's like zones of genius are often not seen as such because they're so natural that we think that everybody kind of has that skill, that talent. It's like you don't recognize it because it's so natural that, well, isn't this how everyone thinks? Isn't this how everyone does it? Right? And so in retrospect I realized that the only way I was able to become first in two places competing against people who were doing only that thing, but I somehow beat both of them. Doing both was just operational efficiency out the wazoo in comparison. And so again, what that ultimately is, is it's like having, and I call it actually business harmonization now is what I've sort of coined it, which is the combination of people and systems coming together under a unified vision and goal. If you have those things or if any one of those things is off, then the whole thing doesn't move forward. You don't have harmony.

I love that. At what point? I guess to a certain degree it probably happens at every stage of the business. Even if you're a one man show, you've got to start thinking of where to allocate your resources because you're even more scarce, right? Your time is more scarce, your intellectual capital is much more scarce. So you probably have to pay closer attention. So what would be a way for someone to recognize. Let's start off with a solo practitioner if they're in operational harmony.

So that's so funny. You know, my response is there's no way you are because you're solo. I honestly don't believe in the whole solopreneur, solo practitioner. And that being said, I am of course not in the practitioner space. Maybe there truly is a way to do it. I don't believe in solopreneurship. I think that. And what I've seen is it is a fantasy sold to people and it is actually soul crushing. Because coming back to zone of genius, it is no one's zone of genius to be able to do everything in business. Nobody. Right. And so, and just a simple example, if you love doing sales, you probably hate doing admin. If you love creating automations, you probably don't like communicating with other people and having meetings and such. Like there's just opposing things all over a business. So a solopreneur is inherently paradoxical if you want to have like if you want to feel good about what you're doing. So, so to me my answer is there is no real business harmonization for a solopreneur. And again, maybe that's what you're signing up for.

Yeah, I totally agree. You know, the sooner you can add that second person, the better. And you know, maybe it's worth unpacking but, but I'm always pushing for that for people. Like I'm their biggest cheerleader to bring somebody else on board that complements them. And in my personal case, that happened to be my wife. So. So she, she is my mirror, maybe polar opposite in many ways, right. So very complementary to where the things I don't like to do, she likes to do and vice versa. So I kind of lucked out that way. Not everyone has that fortune. I recognize that not everyone has a partner. Not everyone, you know, is in that position or maybe their partner works full time and that's not an option for them. But the sooner you can find that individual or it might even be a part time role, it could be maybe an ea to start out the better. And so that's where kind of either getting some business funding so you can bring that person on board is important or making sales. Right. Like getting people to say yes to what you have to offer. And I would say that one of the most important things that people do, that one of their first kind of milestones or objectives is, is who can I bring on to help me so that I can spend as much time in my zone of genius as possible. And it's, it's kind of like, it's kind of gut wrenching for me too because when you try to take things off people's plate and they say no, I'll figure this out on My own. I'm just like, oh, like, okay, where do I start with you? Because.

Yeah.

You're just like, why are you going to learn this or do this, like, you know, like, debugging of this web page or building out this webpage. I can have someone from my team have it done by the end of the day for you, or you can putz around with it for three months.

Yeah.

And. And now. And still not get it done. Right. And waste hours and hours of your life. So it's kind of interesting why people are their own worst enemy there. And. And so I'd love for you to share perhaps if maybe you have an answer for this, some experience around it. But why are people so reluctant to hire somebody else? Because I sense that a lot with solopreneurs.

Yep. Yeah. So first things first is the hardest hire is the first hire by far. Like, like. And that's the truth with most things. Part of sale is the first sale, hardest hire is the first hire. Like, all those things. And one of my. And you know Alex Charfen well and such, one of my favorite things he talks about is at every level of leadership or business development, the hardest thing to do is the continuous letting go of control at every single level. Every and most, if not all entrepreneurs that ever get stuck at any level is it's because they get to a place where they can't let go of control more than where they're at now. Right. Simple example is like, you think about, like, Bill Gates or, you know, any of these giants, Elon Musk and such like they are. There's so much happening that they have no idea. And they've had to let go of so much so that everything can grow. Such a process of letting go. And so the reason I say this, and again, why it's so difficult on the first one, is one of the things that entrepreneurs love about being an entrepreneur is they're quote, unquote, in control of their schedule or in control of their life and such. Right. The paradox is that you are now giving yourself an illusion or a delusion of control, but you don't have control. You never will. And the sooner you can come to peace with that, the sooner you can then start to get into a world of, well, what hiring means is me letting go of things, letting go of control of things and trusting my baby, my business, what I'm doing with someone else to hold it. Right. And so that, to me is the biggest one. There's other granularities and such. And you even mentioned, like, you know, Find funding and such. I don't even think you need funding. Because the reality is the cost of you not hiring someone to do these things that are way not out of your zone of genius and way less revenue generating is costing you so much more than what the wage of someone to do it is. So if you're making like, I don't know, man, 50,000 a year or whatever and you have no hires, I can guarantee you, guarantee you that you can easily double that with having just one other person. Because if you had one other person working anywhere near the amount of hours you do, or if you're an overworker, like even just 40 hours, and it's 40 hours of things that you don't like to do, don't want to do, or are not good at, then there's so much that comes out of it. One time obvious, but the bigger one that a lot of people don't talk about relative to time management and time, I guess ROI is energy, right? So the energy cost of doing something you hate to do is way more than the cost of something you love to do. Coming back to what we said about zone of genius, if I do something I love to do for one hour, it feels like it took 10 minutes. If I do something I hate to do for one hour, it feels like it took 10 hours. Right? That's real. This is like, this is one of my arguments of why I think time is not real. But, but that's a separate topic. But bring it to the grounded point of like, we know that to be true. We've all experienced that. And so the cost of that, Right. Because we actually get fueled by the times where we do one hour of work and it feels like 10 minutes, we're like, Bro, I could do another 10 hours of that. Whereas when we do those one hours that feel like 10 hours, you're zonked. You're done after that already. You're already done. So there's just so much that comes from this. But it first starts with realizing that you will have to let go. This person's going to fuck it up. And that's fine. That's part of the process. And we can talk about, like, how does, you know, help with all that and SOPs and all this. But that's, that's the high level.

Yeah. You know, one thing I love everything you said there, and one thing a few ideas or concepts have popped up for me is think of how many times we effed it up. And, and so that's just part of the growth Process. And here's another idea or thought that came up for me earlier today. Not failing is failing, right? So if you're not constantly bumping up against mistakes or, you know, you know, issues or challenges, and you're probably not growing, you know, you're just kind of living the same day life, you know, week, month, whatever, on repeat, because you're not bumping up against anything. It's when we, you know, change takes place when things bump into each other, right? That's how molecules come together or atoms come together to create molecules, how new planets are formed, moons are formed. It's when things collide and come together. And then there's a period of time that it takes for things to, you know, kind of regulate. But it all settles down. And the sooner you can make that first hire, the sooner you can make potentially the second hire or the sooner you can rehire the first person that wasn't a good hire, right? We're always going to be in a state of flux and growth and just crucial for people to recognize. So, you know, don't be worried about, you know, somebody failing. That means they're growing and they're, if they keep making the same mistake over and over again, that's a different story. But that's part of the process. And then the other thing that came up for me, what I, what I explained to the people that I coach, is that if you had an extra, let's hypothetically say you're paying someone a thousand dollars a week depending on how much they work, that, that could be very generous. It may not be, but it just depends on what you're having them do. And both just use round numbers. So $1,000 a week, let's say your program is a two to $3,000 offer, right? So you'd have to sell maybe, you know, if you count your cogs, you might have to sell like 6 to $7,000 of services to, to be able to cover that person's salary. But if you had 160 extra hours a week to focus on the things that you're really, really good at and you couldn't earn that extra revenue, then something else is wrong, right? So I think it's important for people to realize that as, as CEOs, entrepreneurs, like visionaries, whatever we are and how we define ourselves, we have to be able to think in advance. And it's always better to hire someone when you don't feel like you need them than it is to hire someone when you're desperately in need of someone. So maybe, maybe you could talk about that, you know, timing wise, like, when's it, when's a good time? Or when, when should we recognize that, hey, this is a good time for me to look into this closer.

Yeah. So again, for first hire and even to give a good example with BTP and me and David. So David, I partnered and. And so, you know, is that a first hire? Technically not, right? We partnered. Our first hire though was, was day one. Like we hired a VA from the Philippines. Like day one. To this day, he's still with us. We're over three and a half years now. He is still with us. We make the joke that he's been with us since before the brand even existed. And. But we made that hire immediately because we knew that very quickly there are things that we're not going to want to do and that are out of our zone of genius. So first things first is like, to me, again, I just, I do not believe in solopreneurship. Like, I can't be more clear about that. I think it's, it's not right. And that it should be immediately now, if you need some. Because I'm coming from experience, right? So if you're not coming from experience, you've never hired before or you've had bad experiences, that's a big one, right? Then to at least support yourself in justifying if you should or shouldn't do it. An easy, well, easy, relatively easy thing you can do is figure out what your hourly, your own hourly wages, right? So with the hours you put in and the money you make and you do the math, right? Here's my revenue, here's my hours divided. I am worth, I don't know, $40 an hour, $50 an hour. I mean, practitioners are probably much higher and such. And then take a look at the things you're doing and ask yourself, is what I'm doing really worth $40 an hour? Right. It's a very easy little practice. And if it's not, which trust me, most of what you're doing is not, that's a really good indicator to hire for that talent. And again, a lot of the things that we don't want to do, we can get overseas at a very affordable rate. But even if they're local and you get them at 20, 25, $30 an hour, if you see yourself at $40 an hour and you get someone at $30 an hour, you're making a $10 an hour spread on every hour that they do easy math, right? So that to me is a good exercise to just help justify why you should do it. Then I think there's probably going to be an opportunity, I'll let you chat, but there's probably an opportunity to talk about the fear of hiring and, and maybe people having bad experiences because there's a lot of, I've got a lot of assets to make sure you, when you hire, you hire, right?

Yeah, I think, I think that's crucial. And you know, having certain criteria set up in place and there's, it's a whole different conversation about the hiring process itself. And my mentor taught me that you, you know, you make people jump through very easy hoops but with very specific instructions. And then you, you know, you obviously want someone who can follow instructions. And anytime we're hiring, I think it's really important for us to really know ourselves. So there's a, a list of things that I have people write down. This comes from our, I think, I think you know, Joe Polish. So Joe talks about half an elf. So what are the things that are hard, annoying, lame and frustrating? And what are the things that are easy, lucrative and fun? And you just sit there, make a list. And this could be, you know, tasks, this could be people, it could be projects, whatever it is. And you kind of write down the things intuitively that you feel like you're really good at that make your company money that are revenue generating activities and that you have fun participating in and look forward to versus a dread. And then what are the things that are hard, annoying, lame and frustrating? And you know, the things that you find hard, annoying, lame and frustrating other people actually find easy, lucrative and fun.

Glad you said that because that's the key.

If you can find that match and then just submit to the idea that 20% of the time you're going to be doing stuff that you probably don't want to be doing, but 80% of the time you're going to be spending a week doing the things that you love doing. That's kind of four, one, five day split. And I think people should be okay with that. Right? And then the other person spending 80% of the time doing the things that they love. And it can be a really nice setup for a business, especially when you're starting out.

Yep. Yeah, I'm glad you said that because that's another big misconception where people are like, well, if I hate to do this, everyone must hate it, right? And I always like to use the example because generally I speak to like entrepreneurs and ambitious individuals and such and usually none of them like admins So I always think like, hey, how much you hate admin? There are genuinely people out there who love that admin. They just love not talking to anyone, be on the computer and entering data. Like they just love it. And then they love doing models with it and all this kind of stuff. Like that's a thing. And a lot of people have that as a hurdle to even want to delegate. They're like, why would I delegate something I don't want to do to someone else? Like, then they won't want to do it. It's like my commitment is always like, how can I help put people, all, everyone on my team in their zone of genius on different things.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I love that it's so simple yet so important. And because it's so simple, it's often overlooked, especially if we're making decisions from a emotional place because we're so behind the eight ball and we needed help like a year ago, you know, finally ready to bring somebody on board. So you talked about scarce resources, time and money being one of them. What are some other scarce resources for us to consider?

Big one, man. One of my favorite to consider is decision making power or decision fatigue being the inverse. I think that we really underestimate how much our world has changed from what our brain is used to doing relative to decision making. And again, just the classic of like we used to live in a tribe and know, you know, upwards of, I think what was the tribe number? Was it, was it 300 or something? Like that was like there was research done on this. Long story short, 300. Yeah, I think so. Right. And so like that was the max and like your decisions around that were, you know, relative to that size now, I mean we have upwards of 5,000 Facebook friends. We have upwards of thousands of LinkedIn people like so many other people and things that are become variables in this supercomputer in our head that all has to be filtered and considered and then ultimately still make clear decisions. So decision making energy is a very scarce resource that's heavily underestimated and why I am so brutally disciplined about like my notifications and when people can communicate with me when I put my phone away, all these kinds of things. So that when I'm going to go into what I need to be doing relative to decision making, I actually have the energy to do it and do it right. So that's another really big one for sure.

I love that. Do you ever follow your chronotype? Have you ever studied that?

Actually, funny enough, I just found it recently, I think I'm the most common one. Pretty sure I was sad. I really wanted to be the wolf. And I, I was like, I'm not the wolf, but.

I think the bear is the most common.

If I'm not mistaken, it was like your standard daytime one. I think something like that.

Okay, I tested as a lion, but I kind of want to be a bear. I, I, I admit I like sleeping in, especially in the winter, because the, the days take. It takes forever for the sun to come up right now, you know. Okay, so decision fatigue, that's a big one. I know Steve Jobs talked about that a lot, or know people talked about Steve Jobs in that context a lot, because his goal was to say no to more things than he says yes to. And, you know, because when you say no, that's one decision, but when you say yes, a yes usually is followed up by a thousand other decisions that you have to make. Right. So, for example, hey, should we move? No. Okay, great. Everything's the same. Yes. Okay. Now I've got to start shopping. I gotta start, you know, getting a real estate agent. You know, it completely. Whole new set of problems have been unlocked and opened up when we say yes to something. So it's crucial and vital that we say yes to the things that serve us. Kind of like that client that you said was bouncing around from program to program. I think many people listening to this can relate to that, because I know so many practitioners that if I just do one more program, I'll be able to sell myself more. Right. And for sure, no, like, you don't need to learn one more thing that you may or may not ever use because you don't have any people to help. Right. That needs to be your focus. So. Yep.

Yeah. It's like instead of learning a program on what you like on your service, take a program on how to sell your service or how to market your service first. And then when you get to a place where you have so many clients asking you for something you don't already do, then get the program on that thing. But, like, let the market tell you what to do. Learn how to get out there.

One of my friends heads up Deloitte's AI division, and one of the things he taught me was they taught him, and he shared it with me, is that there's just in case information and there's just in time information. So just in case information is like, oh, I might need this one day. And just in time information is, I need this now. Right, so what you need now for most people is maybe we need to bump our revenue up, get more people saying yes to our program if it is the right program for them, and then always want to be conscientious of how we manage our resources. The other big thing, I think for a lot of people, as they're in the growing phases of their business, is not just hiring, not just managing resources, but as mindset. So I'd love for you to talk a little bit about that. I know you guys do a lot of coaching with entrepreneurs. What are some of the mindset blocks that a lot of people come in with that can hold them back? And what are some ways to not only unlock what those are, but then dissolve them if they were facing those challenges?

Yeah, Very broad question. I'll start with an answer, and then I'll want to see if you maybe have even more granularity, because this. This one just popped in me right now. One of my favorite mindsets for entrepreneurship is slow is slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. And I love this thing. And a good example is if you've done any kind of wheel sports, so like biking, longboarding, any sort of thing like that, even with cars, kind of. But you'd have to be going very fast the faster you go. There's a certain threshold you get to with speed is you start to get what's called the speed wobbles. And there's a really good video about this. When I do workshops and such, and I'm trying to get this across. I show this video of a kid lawnboarding. You know, he's just like, beelining it. He's going. And then you start seeing him, and he starts wobbling, and he's just like, oh. And then wipes out hard and just flies, you know, and then. And then it's. It's a very good example because if all he did was go a bit slower and not get the wobbles right, not only did was it that when he was going fast, he thought he'd get to his destination faster. He fell, needs to, you know, recover, figure out where his board is, all this kind of stuff get back on and start up again. Right. That's a lot more time than if he just went slow enough to avoid the speed wobbles and just get to the destination. My favorite example for this. So again, slow is smooth, smooth is fast is one of the most important things, especially because most business starters and founders and such are what would be classified as, like, a visionary. And visionaries have a very weird understanding of time. Right? They See something and they want it now. Alex does. Alex Charfen again does really well at talking about, like, you know, they go to the future and they bring it to the present and they demand it to happen now. And in a lot of ways it's a superpower, and in a lot of ways it's a curse. And so the superpower is the fact that they can again, go all the way to the future and see no obstacles and just see the vision and pull it in and get everyone to go for it. That's a gift to be able to even see that, because most people can't do that because they only see the obstacles and the next step. The curse, though, of course, is you're then now trying to get everyone else to do this without any consideration of the very real obstacles, the very real things that are happening. So their concept of time and therefore speed, very relative things, is out of whack. Yeah. Distort is a good way to put it. Yes. Thank you. And so, yeah, so that again, is my big thing for most people in business is like slow, smooth, smooth is fast. And that's why people like me are very valuable to founders, is like, I'm an operator type person. If you take the EOS visionary integrator test, it's a good test to show you, like, if you're more on a visionary side versus integrator. Integrator, synonymous to like COO or operator and such. I score high on both, but higher on integrator. And so I have a good ability to ground these visions in like actual timelines. So that's a good one.

Amazing. Amazing. So much, so much wealth of knowledge, brother. I see that there's all these plaques behind you, but I can't read what they say. I'm curious if you don't mind sharing what they say.

Yeah, I mean, there's a few different ones. And it's funny because there's actually even a story as to why they're there now. So there's scholars at your service one, which is a student franchise thing. There's a leadership award, a prestige award. There's college pro ones where there's president's club, the big X, which is like a certain threshold of new revenue because with window cleaning businesses, a lot of it's recruiting occurring, so then generating new revenue. There's Cutco awards for number one sales manager, number one franchise. Like, these are all these awards. And what's funny about this good story and actually really good lesson. In that time, I was very motivated by accolades, very motivated by recognition, ego driven. And so I really hunted these things. Like, I was like, I want to be the best. I want to be number one. I want to break records, I want to get the awards, I want to go on the stage, I want to do the thing. And I did it all. It was great. However, a lot of the time, these accolades and things aren't actually what's important. And a very real example of that is none of these were awarded for profitability. And so I was really good at. A lot of these are relative to revenue, some relative to team and this at the other, but a lot of them relative to revenue. So I pushed for a lot of revenue stuff and my margins were still fine. I did well, but there was nothing around, like, kept money or. Or profitability or this, that the other. Like, there was none of that. And it ultimately actually resulted in me being in a pretty big tax burden and all this stuff, and it kind of sucked. Long story short, me going for these accolades, I started to actually. It was a big ego check and all this kind of stuff. It was the classic thing of being, you know, are your goals really your own kind of thing? And I took them down for years. I was actually just not proud of them anymore. And I store them in all that kind of stuff and, and only until I moved to this new place here in June. So only a few months ago, I just, I had the, like, I went through my journey and I'm no longer the person who needs these accolades and recognition, all that stuff. I still value them. I think that if as an entrepreneur, you are not recognizing and valuing your team vocally, verbally, and often, then you are, You're. You're just not doing your duty as a leader. And so I also equally desire that, but I no longer do everything for that. And so what this now is for me is simply a reminder that I can do anything to set my mind to. Every single one of these were things where I was like, I'm going to break the record. Done. I'm going to be number one. Done. I'm going to be. And so now every time I see it, it's just. It's just remembering that, like, again, as. As mentioned, I can do anything I set my mind to. If I'm committed, if I'm disciplined, if I make the right decision, if I connect with the right people, if I learn from the right people. It's, it's, it's. It's a formula.

And I think a big thing you talked about bringing this conversation full circle is the intention.

Right.

The intentions back then were probably different than what the intentions are now.

Yeah, I love that.

Oliver, this has been fantastic. I know we can go on for hours and hours and there's so much that you have to share as well. You train people, you coach people, you help and support businesses. So I'd love to know how people can stay connected with you and if they want to go deeper, how they can get connected with you and learn more about what you have to offer.

Yeah, for sure. So there's really two routes or two places depending on what you're connecting with more. So if it's the conscious sales side of things and you're looking to potentially get support on you yourself learning conscious sales or looking to build a sale, a conscious sales team, or if you have one already and you want them to become conscious sales trained, then Quite simply just www.conscioussales.com 2s is in the middle there. And then if you're more looking for again, operational efficiency or what I call business harmonization, which is ultimately like, are you really getting the most out of what you're doing? Do you have the documentation in place to make sure that when you hire someone, they actually know what they're going to do? Do you know how to hire someone? Like all this stuff that we're talking about hiring, like, I've got SOPs, assets, templates, all those things. You'll want to go to the Wolf Syndicate. S, Y N D I C A T e dot com. And that's my personal brand, my personal sort of one on one consulting and coaching where, yeah, we just streamline things so that you're more in your zone of genius and having other people in their zone of genius helping your vision come to fruition.

Amazing. Thank you, my friend. And so grateful for our time together today. Grateful for everyone who tuned in and got to listen to this conversation. I know that I certainly wrote down a whole bunch of notes and learned a lot. I loved, you know, I love that quote, slow is smooth and smooth is fast. I'm. I'm definitely going to quote you on that in a future training because I think a lot of times people try to go too fast too soon and they, you know, get, they get a little bit banged up and then sometimes it's hard to recover when you fall. Right. The ego takes a bruise, the body takes a bruise, and we don't end up being where we want to be. So thank you for all the lessons you unpacked for us today. And, and here's to continued friendship. And. And growth in. In all areas of your life. And have an amazing holiday season, my friend.

Yeah, you too, man.

Thank you.

Thanks, everyone.

Lots of love. Bye for now.